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Parenting Resources

Parenting Resources

For help finding resources in your area, call the Child and Family Ombudsman at 1-844-25CHILD (1-844-252-4453).

Soothe a Crying Baby

Download the Crying Card to share with expecting parents, babysitters, clients, friends, family, and anyone else who interacts with young children to promote awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma. The Crying Card offers tips to help soothe a crying baby and the caregiver, as well as information on the characteristics of normal crying.

Tips for Being a Nurturing Parent
One of the most important things you can do to prevent child abuse is to build a positive relationship with your own children. Read these tips to help nurture that relationship.

Time Out
It’s been around since dunce caps and corners. With a modern twist, Time Out can be a valuable discipline tool.

The Power of Choice
Would you like to get your kids to willingly cooperate? Stop the daily battles? Teach your kids valuable life skills? If your answer is “Yes! Yes! Yes!” then read this.

Winning the Chore War
“How many times do I have to remind you to take out the trash?” Sound familiar? Household jobs are a part of every family’s daily life, yet they tend to create ongoing conflict. Here are a few pointers for making the process easier on everybody.

Sibling Rivalry
The word “sibling” refers to brothers and sisters, and “sibling rivalry” means the competitive feelings and actions that often occur among children in a family. Here are things that you can do to try to reduce sibling rivalry.

Setting Rules and Consequences with Teens
Rules and consequences are critical to negotiating your way through the teen years. Both the rules and the consequences may change as your teen’s needs (and desires) develop. It helps to ask yourself some of these questions about your rules periodically.

What it Takes to Be a Mom or Dad
A helpful list of simple everyday suggestions.

Established in 2011, the Best Beginnings Advisory Council serves as the comprehensive early childhood advisory council and will serve as the collaborating entity for the early childhood system. The council includes representation from interested constituency groups, governmental agencies, the public at large, child care providers, state and local government, and tribal communities. The council's work will focus on creating a statewide plan for a comprehensive early childhood service system that will assist in the four principal objectives:

Children will have access to high quality early childhood programs.

Families with young children will have community support.

Children will have access to a medical home and health insurance.

Improving the social, emotional, and mental health needs of young children and families.

Complementing the work being done at the State level, are local Best Beginnings coalitions. There are 20 local coalitions statewide. The local coalitions are working to increase coordination across child serving systems at the grass roots level in towns, counties, and regions.

The National Alliance of Children's Trust and Prevention Funds assists state Children's Trust and Prevention Funds and promotes and supports a system of services, laws, practices and attitudes that strengthen families' capacity to provide their children with safe, healthy, and nurturing childhoods.

Since 1972, this organization has led the way in building awareness, providing education and inspiring hope to everyone involved in the effort to prevent the abuse and neglect of our nation’s children. Working with chapters in 39 states and the District of Columbia, it provides leadership to promote and implement prevention efforts at both the national and local levels. This site contains materials for child abuse prevention, parenting tips, press releases, state chapters, opinion polls and other publications.

The Raising of America will reframe the way we look at early child health and development. This documentary and multimedia initiative explores how a strong start for all our kids leads not only to better individual life course outcomes (learning, earning, and physical and mental health) but also to a healthier, safer, better-educated, more prosperous, and more equitable America. This site contains more information about the documentary, which is scheduled to launch in Fall 2014. You can also find out how to become involved in the project to change the conversation about what we as a society can â€“ and should â€“ do to ensure every infant has an equal opportunity.

Founded in 1959 by Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson, Childhelp® is a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect. Childhelp's approach focuses on prevention, intervention and treatment. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-4-A-CHILD®, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam

Child Welfare Information Gateway connects child welfare and related professionals to comprehensive information and resources to help protect children and strengthen families. We feature the latest on topics from prevention to permanency, including child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption.

The Shaken Baby Alliance was founded in 1998 by three mothers whose children were victims of Shaken Baby Syndrome. Kim Kang, Melonie (Smith) Caster, and Bonnie Armstrong joined together with a goal of forming a collaborative agency that could meet the needs of families and professionals involved in child abuse cases. Rather than focus on the negative aspects of what happened to their children, these moms focused on the positive outcomes that could be obtained through their experience by providing education about this devastating form of child abuse to families and professionals and advocating for children. The Shaken Baby Alliance’s mission of Support, Prevention, and Justice is strengthened through each program offered.

National Alliance for Grieving Children (http://childrengrieve.org/). NAGC provides a network for nationwide communication between hundreds of children's bereavement support professionals and volunteers who want to share ideas, information and resources with each other to better support the families they serve in their own communities, as well as promoting awareness of the needs of children and teens grieving a death and provides education and resources for anyone who wants to support them... Because all grieving children deserve a chance to heal. Some of the resources include the ones you've shared but there also additional ones that may be helpful.